


What I love about many waters

by sshysmm



Category: Lymond Chronicles - Dorothy Dunnett
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - 1980s, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Bad Advice, Bathing/Washing, Drinking & Talking, F/M, Fluff, Hair Washing, Hangover, Non-Linear Narrative, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, the band Au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:42:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21975286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sshysmm/pseuds/sshysmm
Summary: Set in The Band AU, post-Checkmate. It's Christmas time, 1989, and Joleta wants to take Philippa out for a girly night of cocktails and salacious gossip. She thinks she's got plenty of advice to give to a young bride married to an experienced man of the world...The morning after, Francis tries to help his hungover beloved feel better.
Relationships: Francis Crawford of Lymond and Sevigny/Philippa Somerville, Joleta Reid Malett & Philippa Somerville
Kudos: 3
Collections: Lymond fics set in the Band/'80s AU





	What I love about many waters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Erinaceina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erinaceina/gifts).



> Elizabeth Bishop - The Shampoo (1955)
> 
> _The still explosions on the rocks,  
>  the lichens, grow  
> by spreading, gray, concentric shocks.  
> They have arranged  
> to meet the rings around the moon, although  
> within our memories they have not changed._
> 
> _And since the heavens will attend  
>  as long on us,  
> you've been, dear friend,  
> precipitate and pragmatical;  
> and look what happens. For Time is  
> nothing if not amenable._
> 
> _The shooting stars in your black hair  
>  in bright formation  
> are flocking where,  
> so straight, so soon?  
> \-- Come, let me wash it in this big tin basin,  
> battered and shiny like the moon._

"I think I need an extra seat for my hair," Philippa mused, touching her fingertips to the unfamiliar texture. Everything reeked of the hairspray needed to maintain the bouffant array of mahogany brown waves about her face. Her hair felt stringy and sticky to her touch, but her companion slapped her questing hand away.

Joleta's brows arched. "Stop that. It took me an age to get those curls to stay."

Philippa sighed and paused to peer at herself in the mirror behind the bar. It took her a moment to pick out familiar features amongst the glistening backdrop of bottles of spirits and the geometric interference of reflected lights. Her brown eyes were round and wondering, ringed by dramatic black liner and thick mascara. She was already too warm in the glittery gold cropped sweater, but the flush on her cheeks was pure artifice: carefully coloured sweeping blocks of rouge and shimmer, their drama dwarfed only by her dark lipstick.

Joleta wrapped herself around Philippa's arm and leaned close to admire her handiwork and her own features. Her apricot blonde hair was a back-combed cloud about her small face, and the freckled edges of her skin had been powdered and contoured into bland smoothness. Her aquamarine eyes were sultry beneath lids heavy with bronze glitter and she left a smudge of lip gloss on Philippa's cheek as she pecked a kiss on it.

"Right, I'm buying and it's happy hour. Pick something good, Pippa!"

After a moment's deliberation, Philippa chose a Woo Woo: the colour implied that some actual fruit was involved, and the name didn't make her blush. Joleta ushered her to a booth from which they could watch the bartender do his woeful approximation of a Tom Cruise act; Edinburgh's cocktail bars were still learning the fashions dictated by Hollywood.

Eventually, after much fuss and clattering, four drinks arrived in front of them - all red as maraschino cherries and adorned with striped straws and paper decorations. Joleta scooped two glasses towards herself and raised one with a rakish grin. "When was the last time we did this? And now you're a married woman, and I have a contract as a solo artist. _¡Salud!_ "

Philippa smiled at this statement. It was easier to let Joleta have her moment than to point out the ascendancy of Philippa Crawford's own career.

She touched her glass to Joleta's. " _Salud, chiquita_."

\--

The tap on the bathroom door was as soft as a cat's paw.

Philippa lay among bubbles and warm water and did not move lest she reawaken the cloying, nauseating smell of lavender. She had wheeled a portable radiator into the room to warm it against the chill December morning, and the lemony sun glittered against frosty tracery on the windows. It was too bright but she did not want to move into the cold air to draw the curtains, so she lay back with her eyes closed, trying to keep her body below the waterline and feeling a great well of acidic cranberry juice and peach schnapps lapping at her insides as the bathwater lapped at her outsides.

She had rubbed water over her face half-heartedly, but knew that it would only have compounded the problem of last night's make-up. Her hair was a matted tangle of back-combed tats and water-resistant product that she couldn't face touching, and it lay about her in reedy swirls, clinging to bath enamel, shoulders and clouds of bubbles equally.

"Yunitsa?" The low voice accompanied another sound at the door. It didn't close fully because of the radiator cord trailing out and it creaked a little at the touch of Francis Crawford's elbow.

"My dear," Philippa replied, her voice hoarse, her eyes scrunching at the sound of her own voice within her aching skull. "Come in. You are always welcome, though I am poor company this morning."

She heard the door whine as he pushed it open and felt the cool kiss of air from the corridor on the damp skin of her face. Francis closed it again silently and she sensed him approach. He changed the light as he did, accompanied by some tinkling of glassware and a gently spoken verse.

"Oh wert thou in the cauld blast,

On yonder lea, on yonder lea;

My plaidie to the angry airt,

I’d shelter thee, I’d shelter thee:

Or did Misfortune’s bitter storms

Around thee blaw, around thee blaw,

Thy bield should be my bosom,

To share it a’, to share it a’."

Philippa smiled at the ceiling, wriggling deeper beneath the water and foam and listening to the sounds of her husband placing something down on the floorboards nearby before he drew the curtains closed against the rude sunlight.

He returned to her side and kneeled next to the bath, his elbows propped on its edge, his own lips curved in sweet delight. He wore a jumper that had, at some stage, been hers: one Kate had made, in abstract patterns of green and blue and whatever other colours of wool came to hand. The sleeves were pulled up to his elbows and he dipped his fingertips into the bathwater to check that she was not suffering it cold. Satisfied, Francis admired his wife's stoic expression and touched a wet finger to the streak of mascara on her cheek, applying a little pressure until her skin responded with a pinkish flush and the black stain was swept away.

A line between her brows deepened, though she still smirked. Her eyes remained resolutely closed and she let out a groan of suffering. "It's all Letty's fault. It always is."

He clucked gently. "No need for blame, yunitsa. I've brought juice and tea and white toast, if you can stomach it. There's painkillers and water if not." His dripping touch moved to her forehead, from which he swept strands of dark hair.

"Oh Francis," she sighed, and steeled herself, at last, to open her eyes. Pink-rimmed, pinprick-pupilled, they struggled to accommodate even the dimmed light. Carefully, Philippa moved her tongue against the fluffy roof of her mouth, feeling the residue of sugar and alcohol, the ghosts of injudicious words and giddy laughter. Memory came sluggishly, aching, an effort beyond the simple identification of sensations experienced. It also came with a rising sense of unease, and Philippa studied her husband's loving smile with trepidation.

"I was very, very drunk..."

His lips quivered and the softening lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled. Behind the thin lenses of his glasses the deep blue irises glittered playfully. "Yes," he agreed, his fingers still brushing along her hairline.

"Oh no," Philippa cringed and sank beneath the waterline as a memory drifted by: straddling her perfectly sober husband on the edge of the bed as she tried to demonstrate some absurd piece of conjugal advice Joleta had given her. Had she fallen off the side of the mattress afterwards? She reached a hand out to prod at her knee and sure enough identified recent bruising.

She looked up at him, only her nose and the upper half of her face clear of the water, her knees risen with bubbles clinging to them. Perhaps it would be better to just lower herself beneath the surface and never come up again.

\--

Joleta rummaged in her bag and produced a stack of well-thumbed magazines. With a decisive slap she presented them to Philippa on the table. The bottom one absorbed puddles of spilled, syrupy drink and Philippa picked at its corner gingerly, noticing how the cheap paper was already beginning to transfer its text to the lacquered surface.

"You remember these?" Joleta tapped a peach-coloured fingernail on the surface of _Cosmopolitan_.

Philippa raised a dark brow and considered her response, sucking thoughtfully on her straw to get the dregs out of her empty glass. "I recall a fixation with 'driving him wild'. Sex tips for conservation workers?"

"They work," Joleta insisted, leaning forwards, her expression earnest. "Don't look at me like that, Pippa, I think I would know better than you - who was the mouseburger last time we hung out?"

She wore a blue sequined bodice that sparkled as she moved and her fingers played restlessly with the gold chains and beads that disappeared down her cleavage. To Philippa she looked barely older than the sixteen-year-old she'd met five years earlier: flawless skin, delicate cupids-bow lips and guileless large eyes. Her voice was less shrill, and did not rise excitedly as she drank: she hadn't produced anything stronger than a perfume spritzer from her handbag all evening, and though she matched Philippa's pace with her cocktails she seemed remarkably lucid. It was a combination that made Philippa feel a little like a bemused teenager again herself, listening to wild tales from a Swiss boarding school.

Flipping through the pages of the top magazine, Philippa used her other hand to fish an ice cube out of her glass and chew it thoughtfully. "'Wear nothing but enormous bed-socks, or a leotard to invite a fight.'" She gave Joleta a dubious look, but Joleta was leaning around the back of the leatherette booth gesticulating at the bartender. "Letty. Really?"

Turning to her, Joleta smirked, and Philippa felt her stomach shift uneasily at the knowing expression on the other girl's face. Joleta eyed the sentence Philippa had been pointing at and let out a dangerous giggle.

"I could tell you something about men who like a fight," she shuffled on the couch like a cat readying itself to pounce.

Philippa sat up straight, guarded. She pulled her crop-top down and sat on her hands - until the cocktails arrived there was nothing to do with them, and when she was anxious she struggled to hold them still. Joleta surveyed her, probably evaluating just what sort of conversation about Francis Crawford's proclivities their friendship could endure. Had she been entirely sober, Philippa might have reflected that this consideration showed a new maturity in her friend, but as it was she simply sat there like a hedgehog squinting at a fast approaching car and bit the inside of her lip.

"Some men..." Joleta cast her eyes to the tinsel and mistletoe-bedecked ceiling with a little sigh. Her fingers were laced on the table in front of her - a mannerism adopted from her therapist - and she seemed indifferent to the length of time it took to prepare their drinks, even as Philippa glanced hopefully at the bar. "Some men think if you seem confident they can do anything with you. So you should make sure you have a response ready."

In the face of Philippa’s lingering, horrified silence, Joleta blinked sweetly up at the waiter who finally set their cocktails down. Philippa took up her glass and drank an enormous gulp before he had even had a chance to leave them. "Could you bring me another one, please?" She said, her voice rising with a note of desperation.

Philippa took another draught of the red drink before composing herself enough to meet Joleta's eyes again. "Letty, that was almost good advice. But please rest assured: I don't need it."

\--

Warm, scarred hands dipped beneath the water to cup her jawline and draw Philippa back above the surface. Francis shook his head at her, his smile growing ever warmer as he bent down to kiss her wet mouth. His glasses misted up from the heat rising from the bathwater and if he minded the taste of stale alcohol on her lips she did not notice him flinch.

"There is no need for that," he told her steadily, lifting his glasses to perch among blond waves so that she could see the seriousness alongside the pleasure in his expression. "Here."

She took the glass of water with a gurgling moan and fumbled the painkiller past her lips, sitting up just enough to do so and feeling the weight of her hair follow her. The taste of the fresh, cool water was unpleasant at first - a reminder of all that was not fresh about her tongue and teeth - but the more she drank the more it seemed to wash away staleness, trickling into all parts of her body and leaving her feeling lightheaded and sparkling.

"I don't think I'll ever drink cranberry juice again," she managed a weak chuckle and was rewarded with Francis's own grin: a near goofy thing of wonderment and relief.

"It seems," he fished the flannel out of the water by her leg, and Philippa shivered involuntarily. "Like you had a good time, at least." After wringing out the facecloth he wiped it over her shoulder, clearing the foam from her skin, the texture rough and warm. He let her take it from him and plunge her face into it, rubbing at the gummy old eyeliner and mascara around her eyes, scouring off layers of foundation and blusher.

Like the water it soon had a transformational effect. Philippa emerged from the flannel pink-faced and bright-eyed, her skin cleared to reveal a smooth complexion and smattering of brown moles. A dimple at the corner of her lips echoed the pained frown between her brows, and her eyelashes clotted with water.

"I suppose I did. Oh Francis, I'm sorry for the state I was in." Philippa turned her soft brown eyes on him, depths like black coffee, plaintive and hot. The more he shook his golden locks, demurring, the more insistent she was, and splashed a hand free of the water to grasp his wrist on the edge of the tub. "No, I was awful!"

He laughed silently and drew her close to kiss again. "My darling, my dearest, my ain true love. _Tant que je vive_. You were simply joyful. I was pleased to hear that Joleta has found a way to move on from her brother's influence. I was pleased to hear that you have a friend who cares so greatly for your well-being."

"Oh dear," Philippa murmured into the flannel, raising it before her mouth, her expression distraught.

"And I must say, it was especially gratifying to know that I am married to a woman who can tell the difference between practical advice and practical jokes."

"Francis!" she wailed, and immediately regretted it when a spike of pain went through her temples. His mouth was wide to show his white teeth, his cheeks punctured by deep dimples, and he rested his chin on sinuous, strong forearms. Philippa dropped the flannel into the bathwater again and flicked a surface layer of water and bubbles up into his face.

\--

"I can't believe it," Joleta breathed. There was a salacious delight in her voice that lit her expression also. She held Philippa's right hand in her own, the other lay on the waistline of her miniskirt, as the two of them swayed and spun circles beneath swaying, spinning lights of all colours.

Above them, Noddy Holder's voice shrieked: " _It's Christmas!_ "

Philippa knew she was drunk. Her head seemed to swirl among the spots of green and pink and blue and white that fluttered over the ceiling of the bar; she felt the burning layer of sugar on the inside of her mouth, the reproachful flavour of alcohol rising to eclipse the cranberry juice mixer. But what fun - to laugh and dance with a friend, to feel that all the drama and misunderstandings of recent years had finally fallen away. At last, to find herself at ease with the kind of girly chat she had been without as an only child in a world of music and countryside chores. Kate was an unconditionally loving presence, but there were things that even sensible, level-headed girls like Philippa did not wish to discuss with their mothers.

Joleta shook her head at what Philippa had told her. Her small mouth puckered teasingly. Strangely, she did not seem to smell the same as Philippa's surroundings. The sticky, cloying breath the cocktails had left Philippa with was not reciprocated when Joleta leaned close to speak in her ear. Instead the freshness of citrus and vanilla remained on her skin, and the synthetic, sharp smell of hairspray drifted about in her wake.

Philippa blinked and shrugged. "It's true, I swear!"

"Well _that_ won't get you very far! You'll be a divorcée by the time you're twenty-one," Joleta tutted.

Philippa's grip on her long fingers must have tightened because Joleta looked at her with a sidelong smirk.

"I know I know, you were nearly a divorcée at eighteen. But you pulled it together so you must be doing something right. I'm just saying that you're going to have to up your game. You're married to a man of the world."

She spoke with levity, as she always did, her words tripping along on the surface of the cheerful Christmas music around them. But Joleta had an uncanny ability to pinpoint the silent vulnerabilities of others, and she had never learned restraint. She struck out and then delighted in dispensing her own brand of comfort while her victim reeled.

"Oh Pippa, don't look so worried!" Joleta's cool fingers touched Philippa's burning cheeks and she looked into her eyes. "These things can be learned. No one is a mouseburger for life," Joleta planted another slippery kiss on Philippa's face and threw her arms about her waist to lean against Philippa's chest.

Philippa smudged the sticky residue of lip gloss from her face distractedly, trying very hard not to succumb to the lump of doubt seizing her throat tight.

Distraction arrived - "Ow, Letty!" - in the form of what was intended as a friendly pinch in the side of Philippa's boob.

"My little Pippa, all grown up!" Joleta said, her voice muffled against Philippa's glittery jumper before she stood up straight again and resumed the more demure pose: hand in hand, hand on Philippa's hip, Philippa's own touch settling once more on Joleta's shoulder.

She really was uncomfortably warm. And her head seemed unsteady, wobbly, like it was ill-attached to her shoulders. Philippa sighed. "I do...worry." She admitted. The words were slippery; uncertain. Was she speaking the correct language? She looked down at her feet, amazed that she hadn't yet trodden on Joleta's bare toes. In a rush, the anxiety that lingered in her heart swelled up, even though she knew that Joleta was not the right person to soothe her fears. "He's done so much. What if I seem boring by comparison? What if he loses interest?"

"Sweet Pippa," Joleta smiled and squeezed her hand. "Why do you think I'm giving you all my old mags? Trust in _Cosmo._ "

At Philippa's dubious expression Joleta shook her curls back from her face and leaned to whisper in in the other woman's ear. Usually Joleta would have had to stand on tip toes to do so, but that evening her high heels were generously accommodated by Philippa's black patent pumps, and she just craned her neck a little to the taller girl’s cheek.

"Let me give you the best bit of advice I ever read in it..."

Philippa listened, the frown on her face deepening as she tried to follow a description that she feared she had missed the beginning of, while fighting the urge to sneeze at Joleta's hairspray. "What? Are you sure? That can't be right..."

Joleta smiled in a faintly superior manner. "Just try it, you'll see. But not tonight. You're far too drunk for that."

Philippa blinked. She swallowed the taste of sugary alcohol and moved her tongue sluggishly around her mouth. "Yes, I am rather." She was no longer certain whether the lights were spinning of if it was the room itself. "Why hasn't it affected you?" She managed to focus a pout on Joleta, dismayed that the drink seemed to have, in a whole new way, emphasised Joleta's worldliness and Philippa's greenness.

Joleta just let out a sputtering laugh. She shook her head at Philippa and squeezed her hand and hip. "Pippa! I've been drinking Shirley Temples. Don't you remember what I was like? I shouldn't even _be_ in a bar."

"But the bar was your suggestion!" Philippa felt her voice rise, matched by the heat in her cheeks as realisation dawned sluggishly on her fogged-up mind.

Joleta's grin was perfect, the picture of sweetness and innocence: even white teeth and pink lips against peachy skin. "Yes, this is for you, Pippa, it's your evening."

\--

Reeling, Francis sat back on his haunches with a laugh, his hands gripping the edge if the bathtub.

"Don't make fun," Philippa told him. "I'm fairly sure I told you how I felt about this last night."

With the mutability of a seaside sky his delighted merriment scudded past, leaving a sombre, genuine expression. "Philippa." He returned to take her right hand in the two of his, laying kisses on each knuckle though his eyes stayed steady on her. "Let the shades of the past be as nothing. With you I am the one who is making up for lost time. And only together shall we find ways to make ourselves sparkle - as _Cosmopolitan_ recommends - and discover all that pleases and does not."

The expression on his face and the touch of his soft, warm lips on her skin made Philippa's heart trip, thudding, and rise against her ribcage. She still felt grubby from the hangover, but took a new interest in the day at hand, smiling wonderment at the thrill of promise in Francis's blue eyes.

"Are you saying that I make you feel...all shiny and new?" She drew her knees up to her chest in a disruption of bubbles and foam, her voice breathier even than she had intended to allow.

"I have nothing to hide," he conceded, a smirk pinching the corner of his mouth.

Philippa leaned over to cover the smirk with her own mouth, the taste of stale drink now a mere inconvenience. She shared the flavours of tea and buttered toast on his tongue and her stomach growled for attention.

The kiss dissolved into giggles, hungry lips working around the edges of hungry lips. "Oh. I have to wash my hair first," Philippa said regretfully.

"The oldest excuse in the book," Francis combed fingertips through the damp waves at her temple, stopping to softly work at the first tat he encountered behind her ear. "Though the chain of your tresses, dear Rudaba, is woven tight this morning."

Philippa sighed and lay back to soak her hair through to her skin, her eyes closed though she felt her husband's eyes on her body as it arched up through water and foam.

He cleaned his water-splashed glasses and replaced them. Clever musician's fingers delved into the weed of her tangled locks. Francis placed himself at the head of the tub and gently pried apart what he could beneath the water. When she sat up he took a wide-toothed comb and began to work from the tips up through matted and tangled layers.

These ministrations were as soft and meticulous as could be. If Philippa drew a sharp breath at any inevitable tug upon her head he would withdraw, murmuring apologies, and wait to see her forgiving smile cast over a white shoulder. He hummed as he worked, a medley of the tunes in his head, songs he was composing to the glory of the woman in the bathtub, whose own merry harmonies sometimes joined his, when she recognised the gist of his process.

As the length of her hair unfurled, freed from its own restraints, he sank his worshipping hands into its depths, massaging shampoo into her wet scalp and with it the scent of sea salt and camphor. Philippa let her head relax back into his touch, let trust and peace overcome her. His thumbs felt out the hidden curves of her head and neck, his fingers tenderly pressed out the last traces of her headache, and then he raked his hands through the long, clean strands and splashed his skin free of bubbles in the bath liquid.

He took fresh water from the tap in a small stoneware jug and poured it over her crown. Philippa laughed into the stream and wiped it from her brows and lashes, and Francis watched the last residue of shampoo and bath bubbles slide from her flushed skin. He held a towel for her, its fluffy surface spanning his wide arms. In a cascade of bathwater and anticipation she clambered out and threw herself into the waiting embrace. Entwined in fresh cotton and drawn close to Francis's warm body, Philippa huddled against his chest, not minding the water dripping from her legs and pooling around their feet.

The orange juice and tea rippled in the rain, and the cold toast sat in its puddle. Francis's socks grew damp and his neck was against her wet hair, but he would not - could not - move. His mouth was to her forehead, his glasses slipping down his nose and his eyes closed in bliss.

"I think", murmured Philippa against his chest, muffled by the towel and enveloped by love. "We should light the fire and return to bed. I have recently come into some kindling that I am sure would work exceedingly well."

**Author's Note:**

> This came out of a combination of discussions with Erinaceina: Francis as the comforter in hurt/comfort fic, Joleta reading _Cosmopolitan_ and giving awful advice based on the sex and relationships column and Francis washing Philippa's hair for her.
> 
> Some sources/explanations:  
> mouseburger is a term coined by Cosmo's editor in the 1960s-1990s, Helen Gurley Brown. From what I can tell, it means a mousey small town girl who has not yet utilised Cosmo's advice to unlock her full potential (?!).  
> Philippa is quoting from a page you can find here: [23 Ways to Please your Man the Cosmo Way](https://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/media/2012/08/23-ways-please-your-man-cosmo-way).  
> And she's quoting Madonna's 'Like a Virgin' to Francis, who knows it well enough to quote back.  
> Francis's poem is ['O Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast' by Robert Burns](https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/o-wert-thou-cauld-blast/).  
> And the title is taken from ['A View of Things' by Edwin Morgan](https://edwinmorgan.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poems/view_of_things.html).


End file.
